


In a Field of Mud and Bone

by restless_joy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:35:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restless_joy/pseuds/restless_joy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean knows he'll never escape this life, never get off the edge. Even if they kill every evil thing in the world - in every world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Field of Mud and Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Devils & Dust by Bruce Springsteen. Title from the same.
> 
> Set vaguely in Season 9.

 

  Salt in the doorway. Wards on the walls, in the windows. Silver bullets in the pistol under the pillow, because you never know. Still, Dean never particularly feels safe. It’s a word with little meaning to him. He takes his precautions but with the things he’s faced, he’s always waiting for the next surprise. For something to finally figure out how to put him in the ground and keep him there.

Dean knows he’ll never escape this life, never get off the edge. Even if they kill every evil thing in the world – in every world.

Fear keeps him running and there’s nowhere to run to get away from himself.

He’s even starting to lose hope for Sam.

Sometimes he plays the last 10 years back in his mind, only the story is different. He wonders what things would be like, where they would be now if he had never pulled Sam back in. Could he have found John on his own? Sam might be a big time lawyer now, with a house in the suburbs and 2.5 kids, a pretty wife and a golden retriever and a god damned lawn to mow every Saturday. Then again they might all be dead, picked off one by one, beer bottles on a fence. Target practice.

Not that they’ve come through without losses. In fact Dean can’t think of a single person still alive that he trusts, not even Sam all of the time. Friends and enemies really aren’t that different anymore and he isn’t really sure when that happened, when the lines got so blurred they ceased to exist. Working with the King of Hell for Christ’s sake. Taking the Mark of Cain, this brand Dean could see on his skin and feel down to the bone, to the soul. It was _hungry_ , hungry like he’d never been in his life and there was that fear again.

Fear keeps him running, and there’s nowhere to run to get away from himself.

What would Bobby say? What would John say?

If they were here he’d get a smack upside the head, an order to straighten up, there’s work to do. He wants that so badly sometimes he can’t function, can't do anything except crawl into a bottle and stay there until the feeling passes.

God, but he would give anything to have somebody to tell him what to do. Tell him how to get his brother to stop looking at him like a stranger.

But he’s the one giving orders now. He’s the one who is left to move on, keep fighting, and he will.

Dean will keep fighting because it’s all he has – the day he stops fighting is the day he’ll lie down and die, and he can’t do that yet.

There’s work to do.


End file.
